Selah and the Spades, Amazon’s latest release, certainly has a lot going for it on the surface. Writer/director Tayarisha Poe has set up a fascinating world and populated it with interesting characters, she even manages to draw some inspired performances out of the actors, in particular Lovie Simone. So why then is the film so inert?
Before digging in, perhaps some clues will lie in the synopsis. Selah and the Spades tells the story of a boarding school that is ruled by five different factions, each tied to some sort of illicit vice. Selah is over the Spades, a group of students who sell drugs and alcohol. New transfer student Palo-ma becomes taken with Selah, and soon the two form a mentor-mentee relationship. The house of cards starts to come tumbling down when Selah’s best friend Maxxie (Jharell Jerome) takes romantic interest in a fellow cheerleader, and incidents around campus begin to reveal the uglier side of these students lives.
From the description, Selah and the Spades would seem like a juicy romp. There is definitely something admirable about Poe’s decision to go for a more restrained and tighter focused narrative, but to this reviewer, it hewed a bit too narrow. This is the least messy, messy school film. The movie is made from such a tight POV that we never truly understand the repercussions of the students actions unless it is enacted against one of the main characters. The headmaster (Jesse Williams) is clearly on their tale but aside from a big speech, it does not feel like anyone other than the few leads matter.
This is what most troubling about Selah and the Spades is that the writer director has created a fascinating world that you’d want to live in…and then never really lets you live in it. It’s often said that brevity is certainly the source of wit, and though the movie doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, it definitely felt truncated and hemmed in. You get an idea of who the main students are in relation to each other, but not the student body, and with the exception of an amazing scene with Gina Torres, not to their parents either. Selah and the Spades as a result does little more than pass the time and never really engages the way it set out to.